{"id":311205,"date":"2024-04-30T14:39:10","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T19:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=311205"},"modified":"2024-09-20T16:01:47","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T21:01:47","slug":"ms-magazine-pro-life-not-designed-protect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/ms-magazine-pro-life-not-designed-protect\/","title":{"rendered":"Debunking Ms. Magazine op-ed that claims pro-life laws are ‘not designed to’ protect lives"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As arguments surrounding exceptions to laws protecting preborn children from abortion continue to rage, all the way to the Supreme Court<\/a>, abortion advocates have been claiming that pro-life laws are a drastic threat to women’s lives \u2014 and one op-ed claims this danger is engineered on purpose.<\/p>\n

The extremely pro-abortion Ms. Magazine featured an article by Tess Graham in response to the case currently being heard by the Supreme Court regarding Idaho’s laws protecting preborn children from abortion. In Idaho vs. the United States<\/em>, the Supreme Court is hearing a lawsuit from the Department of Justice (DOJ) claiming the state\u2019s Defense of Life Act violates the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).<\/p>\n

Dishonestly pointing to cases of negligence and malpractice\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Like many other abortion bans in the United States, the Idaho law contains a so-called life exception, which purports to allow an abortion when ‘necessary to prevent the death’ of the pregnant person,” Graham wrote. “But do these exceptions actually preserve the lives of patients in practice? As Mayron Hollis, Amanda Zurawski, the family of Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, and countless other women can attest, the answer is no. And the truth is, they\u2019re not designed to.”<\/p>\n

But in each of these cases<\/a> Graham mentioned, the problem was one of medical negligence<\/a> or malpractice \u2014 not an immediate need to intentionally kill one’s preborn child. But this makes no difference to abortion activists like Graham.<\/p>\n

“No matter how they\u2019re drafted and redrafted, abortion bans rest on the denial of the fundamental human right to reproductive autonomy,” she wrote. “So-called life exceptions are designed to make abortion bans seem more politically palatable by allegedly allowing for abortions in ‘extreme’ circumstances. But their political function is revealed by their unworkability: The exceptions are medically incoherent and designed in ways that are not possible to implement.”<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Graham argued, the point of laws like the one in Idaho is to eliminate the number of abortions committed \u2014 even if it means countless women die.<\/p>\n

A lack of legal abortion didn’t lead to women dying… even before Roe<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Graham’s claims, there is no indication that a lack of legal abortion has led to women dying by the thousands \u2014 as evidenced<\/a> by data compiled before Roe v. Wade<\/em> was ever decided.<\/p>\n

Researcher Christopher Tietze has said the actual number of deaths from abortion \u2014 in 1945, decades before Roe v. Wade<\/em> \u2014 was less than 1,000 annually, and had already been declining, largely due to the advent of antibiotics and better medical procedures. The Washington Post\u2019s previous fact check<\/a> on the issue cited both Tietze and former Planned Parenthood medical director Mary Steichen Calderone, who acknowledged that the mortality rate had been declining due to antibiotics, and that 90% of illegal abortions were being committed by trained physicians. A 1975 report from the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine found that the total number of deaths from abortion \u201chas been below 500 since 1958 and below 100 since 1971.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Washington Post further explained that \u201c[t]he CDC began collecting data on abortion mortality in 1972, the year before Roe was decided. In 1972, the number of deaths in the United States from legal abortions was 24 and from illegal abortions 39, according to the CDC.\u201d<\/p>\n